


everything i was or said i am

by bratwiththeglasses



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Light Angst, Light Smut, M/M, Opal (a Raven Cycle Story) Spoilers, post-trk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-12-27 00:47:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21109925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bratwiththeglasses/pseuds/bratwiththeglasses
Summary: a pynchy scene that includes cars, st. agnes, and sweat. post-trk, opal time frame.





	everything i was or said i am

**Author's Note:**

> um, hi. this is my first time writing for this fandom. im nervous.  
here's a little scene i wrote for my fave [thanks for introducing me to this series]  
loveu.  
-cpx

Adam looks down at his hands where a new, grimy layer of leftover oil and grease from his work shift have buried them. It’s warm. He smears a frustrated stripe over his sweaty forehead and considers.

His car is dead. He’s stranded too many miles from the Barns. It’s late enough that there’s no memory of the sunlight, just damp blues and humid shades of creeping night. Adam can hear Ronan’s deep drawl from this morning, the sound irritable and passive-aggressive as he reminded him with a shitty attitude to take spare tools with him, “Just in case your shitbox decides to be a dick.” Adam can also hear himself being offended, his own voice higher pitched than intended. Adam knows Ronan is still angry because he refuses to be dreamt a cure for his car, and Adam still is angry that Ronan won’t just shut up and let him do things his own way.

It’s too hot and he’s too sweaty but the scents that mingle -- car fumes, asphalt, the memory of Cabeswater -- make Adam think about how he’ll miss summer in Henrietta once it’s over.

He’ll miss a lot of things.

Frowning, Adam closes his eyes, clenches his fists, and beneath burning eyelids, instead forces himself to remember the rest of this morning: Ronan swiping his lips over the pad of Adam’s thumb, the sharp edge of Ronan’s teeth over his bony knuckles. Ronan pressing his tongue against the inner rivets of each finger. “Shit.”

St. Agnes is only a few miles back down the road. Adam reasons to himself that it’s late; he needs sleep. But St. Agnes isn’t the comfort that it once was. There’s too much and not enough in that tiny attic apartment.

Adam pulls out his phone, the cheapest offbrand available for purchase, and texts Ronan. _staying at st. agnes tonight. see you tomorrow_

He winces when Ronan’s response is faster than he anticipates. He’d been hoping to get away with it, thinking that maybe Ronan was otherwise occupied. Adam feels sick at the thought that Ronan might be doing something pathetic, like waiting around for him to get home.

Home. The word carries unidentifiable weight in the heat of the summer.

Adam reads Ronan’s response. _What the fuck, Parrish_

He puts his phone away and walks the few miles back towards his apartment.

-

St. Agnes is dark and quiet. It smells like he hasn’t been there in a while, like neglect or maybe something he’s outgrown, and Adam is surprised when that realization doesn’t sway him into a bad mood. Adam has never loved St. Agnes, but at one point, it was his. It was all he had.

Before the Barns. Before everything.

Now it feels quiet and dull, a distant memory that isn’t good or bad. Just _past._ As the summer days move by, Adam finds that a lot of himself, who he used to be, has become _ past_ as well.

His phone buzzes twice while he showers. He ignores it.

The water is cold relief against his dirty, heat-stained skin but it’s also miserable. Lonely. Cramped. Taking rushed, two-minute showers in the narrow bathroom used to be muscle memory. His body would close in, conform to the tight space. Wash and rinse, and get out. Save money. Save pride.

Now his shoulders ache for space, for the wingspan he gets at the Barns. For the accompanied silence and the assistance of a second pair of hands.

Adam bangs his forearm against the low hanging shower head and knows it’ll be bruised by the time he dries off. He can already feel the premonition of a kiss from Ronan once he discovers it.

Adam smacks his 3-in-1 shampoo bottle against his palm to coax out the last bit of soap. He closes his eyes as he lathers himself clean and thinks about this afternoon instead: Ronan making an embarrassing joke about dropping the soap as they shared a post-nap shower before Adam’s shift, his hands sliding between Adam’s legs when he had told Ronan to, “Please, stop talking.”

So Ronan had made him whimper and come instead.

-

Adam’s phone is dead by the time he slides himself under the thin blanket that’s been haphazardly thrown over his worn down mattress.

He forces every thought of Ronan out of his mind now that he’s replayed the day’s events. Tries to, anyway. Adam doesn’t allow himself to think about what Ronan might be doing, what Opal might be getting into, how the buzz of insects outside the open window in their shared room back at the Barns would probably have him asleep by now.

Adam also doesn’t think about Ronan’s ribcage against the curve of his back. Or the way his teeth scrape against the nape of his neck while he rubs soft circles against Adam’s belly under the covers. He doesn’t think about the things Ronan only dares speak against his good ear when his back is turned, bodies pressed close enough that they’re one form, one mutated anatomy grown together.

He doesn’t think about how it’s too hot in the summer for the thick blanket they shroud themselves in at the Barns and how it doesn’t matter, because buried in the dark is where they discover new parts of each other; of themselves.

It’s no use to run from thoughts of Ronan. He is aggressively at the forefront of Adam’s tired mind when fists pound against his door, loud enough to wake the holy monuments below. Maybe that’s why Adam doesn’t jump at the sudden burst of sound, or maybe it’s because he knows Ronan well enough to have expected him to show up all along.

-

“What the fuck, Parrish?” Ronan says as he pushes a hard palm against Adam’s chest. It’s forceful but careful. Ronan means to scorch him without inflicting any damage. Adam takes a few steps back, unguarded, unsurprised. Safe. He shifts to look over his shoulder, closing the door as he watches Ronan start to take off his boots -- right then left, then his socks, in reverse order. His belt makes a sinister slapping sound as it slips from his belt loops. It clunks to the floor where it waits for Ronan’s jeans and sweaty tank top to join. “Guess I forgot to check the calendar, didn’t realize it was time for you to be an asshole again.”

Adam hardens his gaze. Ronan laughs, bitter and amused but ultimately unaffected. He crawls under Adam’s thin blanket in nothing but his black boxer briefs without prompting or permission.

In the dark, Ronan is dark outlines. The long line of his sharp nose, the curve of his thick eyebrows, the reach of his monstrous tattoo that bites over the tops of broad shoulders, his bare feet that hang over the edge of the mattress. Adam doesn’t need to squint to see him in the dark, his eyes and memory always painfully aware of everything that makes up Ronan Lynch.

“Can we argue in bed? I fucking missed you.” Ronan slips his interlocked hands under the back of his skull, cradling his head as he lays back against the single pillow. Adam is momentarily unbalanced -- not because of the situation, but because _Ronan._

“Are we arguing?” Adam asks, peevish. He smiles and Ronan flips him off, eyes now closed, shitty grin highlighted against the glow from the open window. “Do we have to?”

Ronan’s eyes flutter open but he remains silent while Adam steps over his torso and slips down onto the mattress beside him. Adam feels substantially, gratefully examined by the time he turns on his hip, facing Ronan’s left side. Adam knows Ronan was checking to make sure he’s okay, that all of him was still in once piece. “I saw the hondayota on the side of the road when I drove over here.”

Adam sighs. “Yeah.”

Ronan smacks his lips and Adam braces himself for a repeat of this familiar argument. Ronan demanding he let him dream up a fix, Adam refusing, sniping back and forth in circles until the names they call each other end up whispered against lips, lost in a swirl of tongues and soft sounds. Instead, Ronan just reaches over and places his palm over Adam’s hand that is resting against his stomach, shirt rucked up slightly. Ronan’s fingers graze the soft line of hair that fuzzes over Adam’s lower belly. He swallows down a feeling, the unplaceable one that is reserved only for Ronan. For these quiet moments, hidden in the dark together.

Adam breaks the silence, it’s making his ears ring. “I don’t want you to help me.”

Ronan huffs a laugh. “Okay.”

“I’m serious. I can do it on my own.” The silence emanating from Ronan is more irritating than if he’d been arguing back. Adam wants him to argue back. He tightens his face, eyes scanning Ronan’s profile from compressed eyebrows to pointed chin. “I know you--”

Adam is cut off with a grunt when Ronan suddenly rolls over on top of him, his bare knees pushing Adam’s legs open so that he can press their hips together. “You don’t know shit, Parrish.”

“I know you think I can’t do it.”

Ronan doesn’t roll his eyes, but if he did, Adam is sure he’d be doing it now. Adam pulls his hands from between their bodies and links them around Ronan’s shoulders, his fingers splayed out to align with inked black feathers. “No.”

Adam grips the heat of skin that wraps Ronan’s nape, his fingers sliding against the thin layer of sweat that’s rising to the surface. Adam sinks his nails in to anchor himself and revels in the gentle gasp of breath that pulls in from Ronan’s parted lips. “No?”

Ronan’s eyes inflame Adam. He doesn’t need anything more than the moonlight crawling in from the opened window to know exactly what shade of blue they are. A shiver runs over Adam’s entire body. “You can do whatever the hell you want. But--” Ronan leans in, pushing his mouth against the side of Adam’s cheek. It’s not a kiss but it’s pressure. Comfort. Warmth. “You’re taking your sweet-ass time and if that shitbox of yours is going to keep breaking down on the side of the road, keep you from coming back,” he stops only so he can breathe into Adam’s good ear, “then that hunk of garbage you call a car is my problem too.”

-

Touching Ronan and being touched by Ronan is still so new that Adam feels asomatous when they’re this close. Everything is _heat_ and moisture, tangled limbs and whines so urgent and frequent that Adam can’t locate the source. His mouth is Ronan’s, his hands are Ronan’s, his cock, his skin, _everything._

“Adam, _shit_” Ronan trembles out as he strokes his fist over Adam’s cock. Adam feels the uncomfortable and arousing press of Ronan’s dick against his flank, fervent pumps of his pelvis that means that Ronan is getting off as well, fucking himself against the sharp frame of Adam’s hips.

Adam wants to put his hands on Ronan, all over him, so he does. His nails cut lines, clawing into shoulder blades and the curve of Ronan’s waist.

They move as one, systematic, messy. Complete. “I’m going to come,” Ronan mumbles, and Adam kisses the warning away with an open mouth, biting at Ronan’s swollen bottom lip as it quivers through his orgasm.

Ronan doesn’t give himself time to recover, barely finishes coming up Adam’s hip and stomach before he’s refocusing. Adam can still feel Ronan’s muscles spasming as he pumps his fist faster over Adam’s cock, determination slick over his forehead, his eyes burning with something carnal and innate that Adam knows was once dormant inside Ronan -- but now, when they’re together, especially like this, it is born and present, over and over again. “Ronan, please,” Adam whimpers, his thighs tight and knees bent up so he can leverage himself more firmly in Ronan’s grip. “Please.”

Teeth bare into the meat of his shoulder and Adam throws his head back, coming in pulses and ribbons of warm slick between their bodies, all over Ronan’s fingers.

Adam knows that he’ll lick his hand clean and Ronan will tell him he’s disgusting with a biting smile, and then they’ll lay in bed in their own mess and sweat and rumpled sheets. Adam also knows he’ll eventually let Ronan dream him a cure for his shitbox.

Because Adam knows that he always wants to be able to come back.


End file.
